Evidence

 In a speech carried by several media outlets including (checks notes) The Home Shopping Network, a convicted felon who incited insurrection five and a half years ago insisted that we should all live in fear of an election process that is being run by China. 

Bad news there, chum. If it were being run by China, it would be oppressive but it would be efficient. 

Some of you may have lost track of just how ridiculous things have become. This guy, who got to live in the White House a second time and then proceeded to tear it up, wants us all to know that the election was stolen. Not the one that put him in a position to destroy and defame our national monuments and trust, but the one that was held in 2020. You know, the one that the pillow guy went bankrupt trying to prove that extraterrestrials came down from the stars and put us all in a trance that allowed that guy (checks notes) Joseph Robinette Biden to break up the monopoly the Orange Worst had on the office. Or maybe it was the voting machines that were manipulated by the electric car guy whose rockets keep blowing up and whose trucks can't go through a car wash. 

It was more than just a touch embarrassing to hear the convicted felon remind us that even though we somehow managed to find our way out of the nightmare that was the First Trumpreich that the election where we were cheated of the "correct" outcome was the one that stuck a slumlord and adjudicated rapist back into the Oval Office. The guy who has lost a lot more lawsuits than he has elections would like us to believe that the system that put him back in office is broken. Former Vice President (checks notes) Kamala Harris who (checks notes again) has a history of winning lawsuits, chose not to contest the outcome of the 2024 election, even though the results have been proven to be nothing short of catastrophic to our country and its standing in the world. 

A cursory look at the "evidence" that suggests that the only way this twice-impeached former game show host could keep himself out of jail was to get himself elected again and begin using the powers that a conveniently sympathetic Supreme Court allowed him to get to cover up his serial misdeeds. The two broadcast networks who are not fully insinuated within the feedback loop instituted by the ministry of disinformation, ABC and NBC, chose not to use up their valuable time with this summer rerun. NBC chose to continue airing its documentary series titled, The Americas. ABC filled their time with a game show called Press Your Luck. 

I leave that last bit as a bit of irony that could not, unlike the tales of fraud spun by the convicted felon, be made up. 

Puzzled

 What are words for? This is the musical question that was asked by Missing Persons in a previous century. 

This is a question I find myself returning to frequently as I wander through this tired existence, but I would like to reflect briefly on my own experience: I feel that words are pieces of a puzzle. 

And now, as I am prone to do so very often, I digress. One of my daily rituals is to sit in front of my computer and push myself through the five daily challenges presented by Microsoft's Casual Games version of solitaire. Each of these challenges comes from a different variety of the game. Klondike, Spider, Free Cell, Pyramid and Tri Peaks. Depending on the day, one of these variations is labeled "hard" or "expert." These are the ones that capture my attention first, but I will plod through all five games each day in the effort to gain a month's rating of perfect. This requires that all five challenges be completed each day for the entire month. This is yet another example of my obsessive compulsive nature, and it is also a series of tests of my brain function. These are mildly difficult puzzles that all have a solution, I just need to place the virtual cards in their proper order and I am free to go about the rest of my day. 

A little over a month ago, I happened upon a Free Cell game that announced itself as "Expert." I have been hammering away at this arrangement of fifty-two cards in order to solve the problem they present to my sense of order. To no avail. So each morning I have returned to the game, finish off the day's challenges and then return to that one game that has me stuck. 

I could just let it go. That would be rational. No one would know. Except you now. 

And this is what keeps bringing me back to these words. Arranging them in a particular order in hopes of solving the puzzle that is communication. Each morning I sit down with the intent of sharing thoughts and ideas in the hopes of creating more understanding. Each morning I push away from the keyboard secure in the feeling that I have expressed myself and brought more meaning into this confused world. 

Except when I don't. A missing word or misspelling can cause all that effort to tumble into jumbled code that cannot be deciphered. Sometimes I even make the mistake of sharing ideas that only I find compelling. All those words stacked up just to confuse and confound my readers. 

Sorry for that. But I suppose that is what tomorrow is for: One more puzzle. 

Gender Affirming Care

 Hey folks, just a reminder that these United States are currently at war with Iran. 

To that end, the Secretary of War, "Pistol" Pete Hegseth has decreed that all service members over the age of thirty will be screened for testosterone deficiency. "As we know, the modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting. It requires and demands maximum psychological and mental readiness, and by addressing these health markers early, we're keeping you on the leading edge of lethality, and giving you the same level of support that you give this nation – the absolute best."

It's probably just me, but I'm thinking that keeping a group of human beings "on the leading edge of lethality" is pretty much what got us into this fracas in the first place. The eighty year old convicted felon lives on a lot of edges, dementia for one, but his bloodlust is not something that gets the attention it truly deserves. As for the rest of our enlisted "Warfighters" (Pistol Pete's term), if you fall below that killing level of testosterone, you are eligible for hormone replacement therapy to get us back to berserker levels. 

My guess is that the adjudicated rapist and former game show host would like his soldiers to be every bit as bloodthirsty as his secret police of ICE goons. We have become familiar with the arrest quota to which these goblins are charged, but l suspect there is probably a body count goal hidden just out of public view. 

Except we can see it. We have a much better window on the killing fields here in America than we do in Iran. After the initial casualties were announced, including the one hundred sixty-eight school girls were murdered at their school in Minab and the first wave of US military casualties, there hasn't been a lot to report in terms of human loss. 

All the more reason, it would seem, to get those soldiers in the field all juiced up for the purpose of taking lives. Maybe now would be a good time to bring up the other edicts made regarding our armed forces by the Second Trumpreich: No "Beardos," which includes no further exemptions for religious reasons or for medical conditions that make shaving difficult or painful. Interesting, since facial hair is one of the most significant signs of "proper" testosterone balance. And as far as hormone replacement therapy goes, the Orange Worst has declared that trans soldiers are no longer allowed in his army. Which seems to necessarily include those transitioning to male in hopes of living life on the leading edge of lethality. 

So I'll just toss this out there: A study published in the National Library of Medicine found that testosterone levels of your average rapist or child molester fell within the "normal limits." High levels of testosterone were found in inmates who were jailed for homicide. 

No mention of facial hair for any of those. 

Shazbot!

 What fresh outrage will the news bring me today?

How about the headline that threatens to blow the lid off "Why ABC Canceled Mork & Mindy After Just Four Seasons?"

If you have no memory of the spinoff series created by the appearance of the late Robin Williams on an episode of Happy Days, I wonder if you would call the era in which we are currently living as the Golden Age" of television. This might be especially true if you were to know that it was Happy Days, which ran for eleven seasons and was the progenitor of the phrase "Jumped The Shark." That particular episode was aired in the beginning of Happy Day's fifth season, making it all the more curious how that show hung on for another six years, in spite of having The Fonz literally jump a shark on water skis. 

To be clear, the shark was not on water skis. The Fonz was. 

But I digress. 

Mork, who had travelled to Earth previously and landed in Milwaukee where he battled tohis same "Fonz" character to a standstill, returned it our planet in what was then present day Boulder, Colorado. 

Yes, dear reader, you read that right: Boulder, Colorado. My home town. Each episode of Mork and Mindy began with a shot of Boulder Canyon and the University of Colorado, with Robin Williams cavorting with Pam Dawber in the city where I lived. What followed those credits was an explosion of comedic genius limited only by the format in which it was bound: prime time commercial sitcom. 

And here, I believe, I have answered the question posed by the headline. The rapid fire wit that was on display each Thursday night could not be contained in that half hour between commercials for Bufferin and Sanyo electronics. It was even more difficult when network executroids decided to shuffle the show around, moving it to Sunday nights. Is it any wonder that Robin Williams felt compelled to flee to Hollywood not long after those Milwaukee brewery gals Laverne and Shirley took their show there in an effort to shore up lagging ratings. Laverne and Shirley managed to run for eight seasons. Twice as many as Mork got. 

In the end, I was left with my memories and my rainbow suspenders. Yes, I really had rainbow suspenders. I watched as Mister Williams went on to bigger and better things, but I still missed those anarchic Thursday half hours where he stretched the bounds of TV comedy, and frightened network censors and executroids. 

I miss him today. 

Yard Sold

 Someone once said that "parting is such sweet sorrow," but I'm guessing he wasn't talking about having a Yard Sale. 

My family had put off having this suburban ritual for quite a while and when it came time to drag everything that we had carefully selected to be done with, we filled several tables and spread what would be our former belongings out for all to see. 

After more than fifty years of hanging on to Spider Man comics, I chose to make these available to anyone who found their way through our front gate. Initial perusals of this collection by early arrivals found one gentlemen select twenty-five of what he considered the best and the brightest. For him. This made only the tiniest dent. This is when my son, who was there to watch his childhood treasures find new homes and to assist his parents in that task, hopped up and began taking a few quick photos of what was left of the comic display. I had just begun to dread the piecemeal dissemination of my youth to those who might continue this pick and sneer process. That is when my son asked if I would take one hundred fifty dollars for the lot of them. It seems that he has sent along those digital photos he was taking to a friend of his who he knew collected such things, and without pawing through individual issues, he was going to pay us for whatever was left. 

I let them go. We put them in my son's car as a wave of relief swept over me. A couple hours later, a gentlemen strolled into the yard, He asked if we had any comics left for sale. My son, still fresh off his nominal sales triumph told him no, they were already gone. This brought on a series of offers that eventually stopped at three hundred seventy-five dollars. To my considerable relief, my son did not waver. He had made his deal and he wasn't going back. When the gentlemen finally shrugged and went on his way, we both breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't about the money as much as it was about finding a home for the treasures I had hauled around with me for half a century. 

Contrasting mightily to this exchange was the fellow who initially wandered past our front gate, but was lured in by the curious display of what was once our lives. We kept a banter up as he wandered through the tables, finally stopping at a set of plastic drawers. "There's a clown suit in there," I suggested. our j

"Really?" he asked as he pulled out one of the drawers, revealing the purple polka dot clown suit I knew was there. He held it up to admire its gaudy glory. "My son's going to clown camp next week."

"Really?" I returned. "How about a dollar for the clown suit?"

He faltered for a moment. "I don't have any money on me. I just stopped by to look," and he trailed off.

"I'll tell you what," I offered, "How about you just take the clown suit?"

His face lit up. "Really?"

"Really." 

He left with effusive thanks and we once again felt the joy of releasing our past into the wild again. It wasn't about the money. It was about spreading the joy. 

What Did He Say?

 "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it."

There are a lot of epitaphs that might be suitable for Lindsey Graham's memorial.

Of course there are other moments, like the speech Senator Graham made after his 2026 primary win: “I want to start with a bunch of thank yous. I want to thank the big guy, God. Trump comes later. Mr. President, you're not far behind God, but we’re gonna start with him.”

The fact that there are ten years between these two quotes may tell us a lot about what happened in that decade. Remember that it was ten years ago that a Jesse Dalrymple Vance once wrote, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump might be a cynical a**hole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he might be America’s Hitler.”

Things change. The passing of Lindsey Graham leaves convicted felon who started and has maintained an illegal war to distract and cover up his ties to the world's most notorious underage sex trafficker has lost what became one of his most sycophantic supporters. Like this gem from just a few months ago: "Donald Trump is resetting the world in a way nobody could've dreamed of a year ago, he is the greatest commander in chief of all time, our military is the best of all time, Iran is going down, and Cuba is next,"

Lindsey Graham was first elected to the United States Senate from South Carolina back in 2003. That was back when he was propping up another regime changer with another plan to "fix things." On the occasion of his passing, it might be fitting to suggest that he "stomped on the Terra," but not exactly the way he may have intended. 

Aloha, Lindsey Graham. The ultimate "team player." 

Who Watches The Watchmen?

 From the get-go, let me say that I have a certain amount of respect ingrained in me for all law enforcement, having watched my older brother serve and protect the county in which we grew up for some thirty-five years. That being said, I also live in a world that finds law enforcement regularly in the news not for its competence, but for callous disregard for the communities they are supposed to protect and serve. The challenges of maintaining law and order in a city such as Los Angeles highlight this struggle. 

Recently, LAPD responded to a wellness call in Canoga Park where neighbors had expressed concern about the shouting heard coming from a nearby apartment. More than fourteen of them showed up to respond to what turned out to be a woman celebrating the New York Knicks winning the NBA championship. Somewhere in all the excitement, an officer shot and killed her family dog, who was wearing a Knicks jersey. The body cam footage was released by LAPD and it's difficult to come away feeling as though the officer, whose name has yet to be released, was protecting or serving. 

I will chalk this up to a difficult situation being compounded by bad training and poor judgement, but it will not bring Jameson, the family dog, back. Furthermore, it would be ridiculous to isolate this incident as illustrative of the conduct of all of the nearly nine thousand members of the Los Angeles Police Department. The nominal good news here is that an investigation is ongoing based on the footage mandated by the use of body cams by all uniformed officers. 

Which is why I find it so interesting that just recently the LAPD chose to end its contract with Flock Security cameras, a company that specializes in recording license plate information from vehicles across the vast maze of streets and highways in the city. The footage from these cameras is audited and kept for seven to thirty days before it is deleted. Recent concerns about how this footage is being disseminated, particularly in immigration cases by agencies outside of the city governance. In yet another twist to this tale, the Los Angeles Police Department does not own these cameras. They are owned by homeowners associations and other groups, and there remains some question about whether they will continue to watch the streets of LA once the contract expires. Could the be used by ICE goons to track citizens? Or perhaps used to monitor police presence and conduct throughout the city?

Or maybe we should all start serving and protecting each other. 

Had It

 It would be a whole lot easier to take if ICE goon's mission did not include killing people they were supposed to deport. 

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was murdered by the Department of Homeland Security this past Tuesday morning. The "agents" who killed Lorenzo did not have their body cams on, but there was plenty of documentation in the form of witnesses and their cell phones in addition to security cams located throughout the area. 

The white van that Mister Araujo was driving was chased, pulled over and the goons chose to shoot and kill him because he ran away. In the most morbid Keystone Cops tradition, it turns out that Lorenzo was not the suspect they were looking for. He just happened to be driving a white van that looked similar to the one that these poorly trained imbeciles were supposed to be trailing. 

Who are these trigger-happy idiots who seem bent on enforcing their vision of an immigration policy? The idiots in charge were quick to point out that Lorenzo was in our country illegally, but I cannot find a section of any statute that suggests that being in the country illegally is grounds for execution. The story we are being fed by DHS is that Lorenzo rammed the officers' vehicle and they fired on him "in self defense." If this refrain sounds familiar, you might be remembering when Renee Good was accused of trying to run down on the streets of Minneapolis. As was the case back in January, all available footage suggests otherwise. The goons chose to use deadly force rather than deescalate the situation. 

This is not what they are trained to do. I am using the term "trained" here with a great deal of latitude. They are carrying out orders from a xenophobic racists who are attempting to blame our nation's problems on immigrants who came here just a little after they did. Their murdering rampage has totalled, by government accounts, "at least ten people." This does not include the number of those who were detained and died "in custody." 

This isn't an immigration policy. It's genocide. 

Resigned To It

 Graham Platner has suspended his race for the Senate seat in Maine. 

Eric Swalwell will not be governor of California anytime soon. 

Al Franken resigned his Minnesota Senate seat way back in 2018. 

These are politicians whose careers came to an abrupt halt because of their treatment of women. Harassment. Abuse. Unwanted attention. The underlying reason it seems to me is that if you are willing to torment people that make up more than half of the population, then you probably shouldn't have a job that serves any people. 

Another feature that all those former politicians have in common is their party: They are all Democrats. Following in the grand tradition of Gary Hart, these are men who have yet to figure out boundaries. Fidelity. What the word "no" means. Consider the other Democratic stalwarts such as Bill Clinton, JFK and FDR. These were men hoisted high on the totem pole only to have sullied their own legacy with infidelity and less than, shall we say, "presidential behavior." 

Or maybe this mistreatment of women and the sanctity of marriage is just part of the package when you find yourself in a position that allows a certain measure of power over others. To be fair, a certain number of Republicans have also been shown the door as a consequence for their behavior.

But this guy who calls women reporters "Piggy," and seems to have endless fascinconation with the physical attributes of the women who are unfortunate enough to find themselves drawn into his orbit, seems to have no such limits placed on his conduct. He is a rapist, certified as such by the Supreme Court. A Supreme Court that I feel that I should point out has its share of misogynistic behavior in its record. Clarence and Brett, I'm looking directly at you. 

What I'm suggesting here is that party affiliation or the number of zeroes in your bank account should not be the litmus for whether or not a person should be allowed to hold any office. 

Anywhere. 

Corroboration

 Evidence. It is the stuff that Perry Mason would get to somewhere around the forty-five minute mark out of fifty-two. Perry wasn't alone in this. Most TV detectives or attorneys would eventually get around to presenting some sort of physical proof of just exactly how a crime was committed. As I understand it, this is kind of a bedrock element of our justice system. We even have a fancy Latin term for this: Habeas corpus.

One of the most notorious moments in terms of American Justice and the use of evidence was when Orenthal James Simpson was asked to try on a pair of gloves found at the scene of his wife's murder. One of his attorneys, Johnny Cochran exhorted the jury, along with the multitudes of those watching at home, "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit." 

The glove, in a moment of dramatic revelation, did not fit and it was soon thereafter that Mister Simpson walked out of the courtroom a free man. Which, depending on how you see this process working, is how things should have wrapped up. 

We now live on a planet where surveillance by video is the norm. Very few portions of the globe do not have an eye on us all, making it difficult if not impossible not to leave some kind of trace behind for Columbo or Perry Mason or Johnny Cochran to pick up and utilize to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that crime that was committed had, in actual fact been committed.

We are currently being told, by a convicted felon, that the damage done to the Reflecting Pool was done by "vandals," including a former Olympic athlete who has been arrested for this crime. Of course there is "video evidence," if the blurry indistinct images of figures putting their hands in the goo that has replaced the water in the "newly renovated" pool can be considered "evidence" of anything other than bad judgement on the part of all the blurry indistinct figures seen putting their hands into the mess made by the convicted felon's attempt at giving his campaign donor a no-bid contract to Make America Green Again.

Of course, this is also the guy who exhorted his followers on January 6, 2021 to march up to the Capitol and "fight like hell" to overturn the results of an election he felt he shouldn't have lost. How do I know this? I've seen the evidence. 

I wonder what Perry Mason could do with that? 

Not Right Now

I got the news from my cousin from Kansas while he was out visiting after doing a cross-country road rally. He told me that he had stopped reading this blog because "of all that Trump stuff." After a few minutes he went on to echo many of the sentiments expressed here on a frequent basis, including the mess made in the Reflecting Pool and the illegal war in Iran. 

He didn't disagree with what I was saying. He had simply grown tired of reading my frequent if not daily rehash of events and how I didn't seem able to move off the point. That moved the conversation further down the path that had him confiding his surprise that there are "still folks who are behind this guy one hundred percent."

It was apparent to me that he was feeling the same or similar distress with the way the country was moving. I listened and considered, not for the first time, my own voice crying out in the wilderness. What was I doing aside from the obvious preaching to the choir? How could I not see myself as sitting on the other end of the seesaw that was still "behind this guy one hundred percent?"

I told him that I appreciated his commentary on my commentary, but I also politely suggested that without some sort of equal and opposite reaction from the other side, the outrage might continue and then I would never be able to get back to writing more frequently about kittens and funny things kids say. 

It continues to be a battle, and it pains me that I feel I have to give my hundred percent to poking holes in the directives coming out of Washington. 

Can't I think of anything else to talk about? 

Not right now. 

World Wide

 I consider myself a sports fan. Not unreasonable, but fixated on the outcome of certain games being played by grown men and women for which I have a "rooting interest." I don't gamble on the final score or any of the other mathematical or statistical threads that could become a concern. I do participate in a "friendly" fantasy football league whose prize at the end of the season is primarily bragging rights for the following year. 

This being said, I know that I do not appreciate sports, or rather a sport, like the football fans across the globe who are currently immersed in the contest we now embrace as The World Cup. Far from the somewhat ridiculous exclusivity of Major League Baseball's "World Series" which is comprised entirely of teams from North America, FIFA brings together a truly international group of competitors. This event is, according to John Oliver, the way that Americans learn about geography. Each one of these teams has its own fan base which instantly reveals my "passion" for certain franchises to be a passing fancy. 

I learned just how tepid my own concerns were last weekend when my wife began to notice the sounds emenating from up and down the houses and apartment buildings on our street. Mexico and England were locked in a tense match, and each shot on goal or offsides was met with a roar coming from inside and out of neighbors' homes. As we walked up the street for dinner, we took notice of how still the rest of the neighborhood was outside of these periodic eruptions. It made me think of Super Bowl Sundays when "everyone" was settled onto their couches, staring at the uniquely American "football" spectacle.

Or at least the commercials. 

I was reminded of the 1970s. Back when we in the United States began to tense and surrender for the adoption of the metric system. It was right about this time that initial rumblings began to occur about how we should also brace ourselves for the next big wave of international influence: Soccer. Boys and girls began to organize teams that allowed them to move the ball only with their feet. 

How could this be? 

Most of us are still waiting for this domination to usurp our use of the term "football." But as I made my way down my street in Oakland, I was reminded of the multiculture in which I teach. On any given day there is a basket ball game, or some American football being tossed around, but by far the most regular attraction on our playground is the soccer pitch. Boys and girls from five to twelve are all kicking and screaming to their hearts' content, fully aware of the rules of the game if not the subtle techniques of the players they have grown up idolizing. Seeing this throng of children playing a game with such fervor reminds me of the melting pot in which I live. It makes me understand the World just a little better. 

Monuments

 Fifteen years ago, my family made a trip to Washington DC. It was kind of a make good on the trip that my son didn't go on when he was in middle school. We spent a few days getting to know our nation's capital, seeing the sights and soaking up the patriotism. We took public transit into the city from our friends' house where we were staying and when we came up into the Union Station stop, I took in the view that Jefferson Smith beheld upon his arrival in the 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. My wife and I sometimes talk about my "Jimmy Stewart moments," those times when I am feeling especially earnest. This was one of those times. 

We were there ostensibly to fill in the void in my son's patriotism, but we ended up filling my red, white and blue bucket as well. Standing outside the gates of the White House, with the mild certainty that across that lawn inside was the man to whom I gave my vote twice to be President of the United States, gave me a satisfaction that I can barely describe. It felt right. 

As we meandered around the museums and monuments, I took full measure of the sights I was witnessing. I had made a similar trip when I was much younger with my brothers and parents, but my post-Watergate cynicism kept me from fully appreciating the grandeur I was seeing. After two terms of hope and change, I was ready to pay tribute. 

The following day, we set ourselves the task of the Smithsonian Institute, but first I declared that we needed to stop by the National Archives to see what all the fuss was about this Declaration of Independence. My wife and son and I spent the early afternoon of July 4 that year standing in line for just a quick glimpse. As the day wore on, we found ourselves walking out onto the National Mall just about dusk. We sat down on the grass and proceeded to watch a fireworks display like I can't recall ever seeing before or since, with the Washington Monument in the background. 

Which made me feel all the worse for those tourists who found themselves in a similar place this past weekend but came away with a much different experience. The magic that swept up Jimmy Stewart and yours truly wasn't available this Fourth of July, partly because of climate change and perhaps the gods anger with the way things are these days. 

I hope for all of our sakes that it is not gone forever. 

Lessons Learned

 Where did we go wrong? Did we, as a nation, take the metaphorical "left toin at Albequokie" that Bugs Bunny warned us about? Certainly my fellow travellers would agree with Bugs that this ain't Pismo Beach. No, I think we left the track toward the American Dream some time ago. 

Obviously any country that would elect a slumlord to the highest office in the land, we may have needed course correction, and certainly repeating that mistake eight years later suggests that we haven't learned our lesson. 

But I do not believe that the United States was completely well long before the election of 2016. Some might argue that somewhere around the time we began to embrace the currency issued by our Treasury more than the values printed on it. "Out of Many, One." "In God We Trust." Back in 1987, Oliver Stone directed a movie that offhandedly reminded us that "greed is good." I don't believe that Oliver was making an overt statement in Wall Street, but rather reminding us of the perils that awaited us all if we forgot the working class and embraced corporations as our gods. He certainly wouldn't be the first artist who unwittingly created a snuff film for those who viewed it more as an instructional video rather than the fable for which it was intended. 

Of course if we had already been lost in the woods, this story never would have been necessary. I can just skip past Watergate, since Richard Nixon assured us so very many times that he was not a crook. Instead, I will place the blame squarely at the feet of Lizzie Maggie. If that name doesn't ring a bell, you may have played her game: Monopoly. You know, where you buy up real estate and try to run all your friends and family out of business as you attempt to own everything. It even includes what was the precursor to the pardon, the Get Out Of Jail Free card. Not unlike Oliver Stone, Ms. Maggie was attempting, as she developed her game, to create something that would give us all a lesson in greed. 

All these years later, it would seem that the lesson she intended is not the one we learned. I don't know about you, but I can remember plenty of times when the kid down the street was caught cheating while we were playing Monopoly. 

I'm just a little surprised that he didn't go into politics. 

Mad Dogs And Englishmen

 If you're anything like me, and if you're not why the heck aren't you, then you probably spent a chunk of the past weekend trying to determine how you were going to spend your hard-earned fun coupons celebrating our nation's birthday. I was intrigued as ever by the nightly flurries of aerial shells with showers of sparks and loud reports in our neighborhood. The ones that began in mid-June and will continue to disrupt our quiet nights for the next couple of weeks are a mystery to me. 

It was a few years back when my wife and I traveled north to Oregon to celebrate the anticipation of our anniversary right around the Fourth of July. Crossing the border into a state where fireworks of all sorts were legal and available for sale, we pulled over to one of the many tents pitched by the side of the road and began inspecting all the possible ways that gunpowder and sulfur could be ignited and dispersed into the sky. Eventually we settled on one particular product with the intriguing sobriquet, Mad Dog. We also purchased a few odds and ends like sparklers and smoke bombs and glow worms with the notion that we might find someplace safe and sane that we could share those less than explosive ordnance. When our friendly fireworks salesperson tallied up our purchases, they came to just under fifty dollars, with the Mad Dog being by far the big ticket item. 

We tucked these items in with our luggage and continued on up to Portland. 

We never did find a time or place to make a lot of noise and smoke on our visit north. We retuned to Oakland with our contraband without having fired a single shot in anger or fun. It simply never seemed like the right time or place. 

New Years Eve came and went, and though we were sorely tempted to carry out our barrage, neither my wife nor I could get up the gumption to set fire to the sky. Not when we had so much help from all those houses up and down the streets surrounding us. 

Somewhere in there we decided to give up our Mad Dog. We handed it over to our son, who we figured would find a clever or subversive use for pyrotechnics. 

I remembered all those trips I used to make with my brother when we were young, across the border to Wyoming where they sold beer on Sundays and fireworks were the best reason to make that drive. On one of those excursions, I purchased enough pop bottle rockets that I was able to parse them out over the next several years, bringing some of them along with me when I moved to California. 

They're gone now, much to the chagrin of my son to whom I taught the simple rule: Light and run away. These days there isn't much good running will do. We are surrounded each summer for three to four weeks by things that go boom in the night. 

How can they afford it? 

Born At Or Near The USA

 The convicted felon and adjudicated rapist masquerading as a leader of the Free World is considering a ban on visitors to our country who happen to be pregnant. This was the somewhat ridiculous and draconian response he arrived at after the Supreme Court decided that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution was, in fact, already settled business. Section 1 reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Looking for the gray area? This is "birthright citizenship," and this is the reason for the Second Trumpreich to keep pregnant tourists from visiting the land of the free and home of the brave. Apparently we are currently experiencing a freedom and bravery deficit and we just don't want to run out. "Birth tourism" is a rare enough occurrence, but since we are having a particular challenge staying free and brave here in the moderately United States, 

A couple years ago, the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist wanted us all to be afraid of the murderers and rapists being unleashed on our shores by other countries. 

Very afraid. 

Now we are being asked to be afraid of pregnant women who happen to find themselves within our borders, especially when they're obviously here simply to land a sponge here that will soak up all those glorious resources we offer all our rightly born American babies. Stephen "Nosferatu" Miller made his terror be known to Jesse "Holdyer" Watters on Faux News: "So, you have mothers that come in fully pregnant, have a baby, go home, and that baby gets Medicaid and that baby gets welfare and that baby gets cash assistance. They'll leave the baby with a cousin, a relative, whatever, then send welfare checks back home. You can support a whole family in the third world."

Since "birth tourism" is already illegal, the fright described by the undead minion of the convicted felon is already covered. And since it has been the policy of the Second Trumpreich to kick children and families off any and all kinds of assistance programs anyway, this just serves as one more egregious effort to make us all believe that the United States doesn't have enough money to take care of its children. 

Which may go a long way toward explaining how we ended up bombing that girls school in Iran. 

Happy News

 In the midst of all the ugly news that gets run past us on a daily basis, I figured that I should shine a light on the Supreme Court decision to uphold birthright citizenship. If you were born here, you're an American. 

And that's that. 

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land. We keep that promise today.”

Who would have thought that the same court that outlawed transgender athletes in school sports would act so compassionately? Could it be that there was no big push for transgender rights during the framing of our Constitution? Are civil rights limited to those who conform to the very limited spectrum of pronouns that existed back in the eighteenth century? 

Whoops. Sorry. I was highlighting happy news: Birthright citizenship. Now the ICE goons can get busy setting free all those folks in detention camps that were born here. Presuming they can find them.

And that they're still alive. 

Oops. Did it again, didn't I? 

It's a little like the Supreme Court made it clear that the convicted felon is an adjudicated rapist, but that doesn't mean that he has to leave office. Or the country. Or stop defacing our nation's capital by hosting poorly attended spectacles at all of our expense. If the thought occurred to me to go to the big America 250 sale-a-bration in Washington, I would have to figure out how to finance the fuel it would take to get me there. 

Sorry: Birthright citizenship. It's a good thing. If you're born here, you get to stay here. Which currently doesn't seem quite like the cool deal it probably should. 

Yay

 Just a reminder as you're taping those red, white and blue streamers to your front porch and preparing to feast on the grilled hot dogs you could afford to buy instead of the steak that you wanted for the bit Fourth of July barbecue: The forty-fifth and forty-seventh President of the United State is an adjudicated rapist. 

Yay. 

This ruling was essentially upheld this past week when the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the convicted felon's appeal to overturn the decision that said that he had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll. Oh, and the forty-fifth and forty-seventh President of the United States is a convicted felon, which I believe we covered just a moment ago. 

Perhaps I should also clarify that the forty-fifth and forty-seventh President of the United States is the same "person." The same convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who says that he does not think about your financial situation. And he loves inflation. 

Same guy who threw a party for himself on the front lawn of the ruins of the White House. Same guy whose name appears more than thirty-eight thousand times in the Epstein Files. To give you just a little flavor for that last number, Jesus's name appears approximately one thousand two hundred times in the bible. 

Yay. 

This convicted felon and adjudicated rapist whose name appears more than thirty-eight thousand times in the Epstein Files started a war with Iran, he says, because his son-in-law who is a real estate agent told him it would be a good idea. You know: location, location, location. 

Or distraction, distraction, distraction. 

In an effort to celebrate himself rather than the country for which he was nominally elected to lead he has painted things gold and blue and attempted to get anyone but himself to pay for it. Like the people who he was nominally elected to lead. He's going to have McDonald's for lunch on the Fourth of July because he doesn't have to pay for it. You're going to have to pay for it. Yours and his. 

Meanwhile the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist is committing war crimes and getting rich on insider trades while the rest of us are just trying to live out a sliver of the American Dream left to us: The part where we no longer have to worry about an adjudicated rapist in the White House. 

Yay. 

A Good Start

 Artificial Intelligence isn't something brand new. 

It used to be called "homage." Or in some corners, "plagiarism." 

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was under a deadline and grinding hard to get something that his wealthy Christian landowner cronies would sign. To do this, he "borrowed" from a number of texts that seemed to more or less coalesce his thoughts about freedom. 

There was some Aristotle tossed in there. Like the notion that government should provide a place for humans to flourish rather than dominate. It has a fancy name: eudaimonia, but maybe that was just a little too Greek for the colonists so he roughed it into more of an inalienable rights angle. 

John Locke might have been flattered to see his theory about "life, liberty and property" laid out for King George as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Except that he had been dead for seventy-two years by the time Tom got around to footnoting him. 

Except he didn't. 

Thomas Jefferson just scribbled all these great ideas into one document without annotating his sources. He didn't bother to mention George Mason, a fellow Virginian who was very much alive and whose Declaration of Rights offered up a very clear template for Tom to follow. Even though George's work hit the stands almost a whole month before Tom's did. George didn't even get to sign the July 4 version, as his health didn't allow him to make the trip all the way up to Philadelphia. 

He also failed to shout out his Scottish Enlightenment and its supporters, one of whom was sitting in that sweltering room in Philadelphia with Mister Jefferson: a Reverend John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey soon to be renamed Princeton. 

And maybe it should be pointed out that all that wild talk about all men being created equally, the document also stokes the fear of "merciless Indian Savages" as it seeks to rile up settlers against the indigenous people who were having their lands appropriated by this new nation. Probably just an oversigh on Tom's part. Kind of like the slaves he kept on his plantation. No Declaration of Independence for them. 

Still, two hundred fifty years later, this flawed bit of writing stands as a meaningful starting point for us all. We might all take a moment today to appreciate the cleverness of Thomas Jefferson for finding all these ideals and writing them down for us to consider as a beginning. 

Two and a half centuries later, we still have a long way to go. 

Centennial

 As you read this, Mel Brooks will be more than one hundred years old. Apparently Al Gore's Internet met with some confusion as to the actual date of Mel's birth, which as it turns out was this past Sunday, June 28. It speaks directly to the power of comedy that Clint Eastwood, four years Mel's junior, chose to retire from directing and acting this past year while Mel Brooks is overseeing the production of the sequel to his film Spaceballs, set to appear in theaters on April 23, 2027. 

It pleases me no end to be able to celebrate Mel Brooks while he is still a-live. There is no question as to whether or not he stomped on the Terra. On New Years Eve this past year, a group of us gathered together in our living room, and began searching various platforms for something to watch until midnight. Having worked in a video store in another incarnation, I understood that trying to find an entertainment for any group larger than one was made exponentially more difficult with each added human's taste and predilections. Our festive mood was darkening just as we ran across the DVD of Mel Brooks' The Producers. Murmurs of ascent, perhaps brought on by the thought of spending any more time trying to select something for which we were all in agreement. We put in the disc and hoped for the best. 

For the next eighty-six minutes, we laughed. Hard for most of it, and though we were all aware that we were yukking it up about a group of morally reprehensible people during a time when things were not "woke" by any means, we savored every frame and when all was said and done, most of us were humming Springtime For Hitler. We did this with full awareness of how important being able to laugh at fascists was a gift given to us by none other than Mister Mel Brooks. 

I could go on about the importance of my memoires of being taken to see Blazing Saddles while still a kid by my father, or how I selected the soundtrack of Young Frankenstein as my one souvenir of my family's trip to New York City. Or my wife's enduring affection for Madeline Khan's turn as Lili Von Shtupp singing "I'm Tired." 

I might even wax rhapsodic about listening to Mel and his great friend Carl Reiner's recording of the Two Thousand Year Old Man. 

But for now I will simply bow down and say, happy birthday, Mel Brooks. Who reminds us, “Humor is just another defense against the universe.” And hoo boy can we use that right now. 

Everything Must Go

 Emboldened by my recent dive into the junk drawer in our kitchen, I set out to create something we have only attempted once before since moving into this house: A yard sale. 

We have allowed us all a healthy run-up time of three weeks to prepare for the inevitable shock of "nobody wants this? I can't understand..." 

There coincidence that is the release of Toy Story 5 in theaters as we began this undertaking was felt in my bones as I dragged former treasures out from the shadows into the light. So many toys. So many beloved playthings. And I'm not just talking about my son's past. My own youth was on display even as I dug deeper into the recesses of what my wife has on occasion referred to as "our magic basement."

Items from a previous century marked the Denver Broncos' first Super Bowl win. Most notable in the souvenirs collected in this haze was the poseable action figure of John Elway. I have it on good authority that this is not a "doll" but rather a "collectible," and now that I have lived to see two more Super Bowls won by different players, I can probably let this one go.

Of course I do this with full knowledge that I will be doing this in the heart of Oakland, the one-time home of those silver and black maniacs and their fans, who still cling to their former team with a passion that rivals my own. Once John leaves my yard, I have no control over his future. I have to make peace with this. 

Which is just a tiny example of all the treasures that have gone too long without being noticed. It was important enough for me to buy a Walter White doll, excuse me, action figure back when Breaking Bad was front and center in my life. I will carry the memory of that experience even as I make whatever deal I make with some stranger who wants to sell it on eBay for an amount that would make my head spin. 

But it will be out of my house. It will be one less item that will need to be cataloged and discussed when it comes time for that roll calls me up yonder. Why did we hang on to not one but two video cameras so long after Martin Scorsese started shooting all his movies on his phone? I don't know. I also don't know if we can get anyone to pay us a couple dollars for holding onto said technology for more than a decade. 

Still plenty of time to sneak some of that stuff back into hiding for all eternity. 

Or not. 

What Do I Think?

 In many ways I will look back on my career as a teacher with a modicum of regret. Could I have done more? Did I always make the best choices? Couldn't I have retired earlier? 

That last one shows up as a result of reading the story about how Texas public school students will soon be required to study bible stories. The Republican dominated state board of education in the Lone Star State wants to include biblical verses and stories in the required literature curriculum. 

Admittedly, I have myself studied the Bible. I did this primarily in Sunday school when before my family put the lapse in Lapsed Methodist. I did so well that I earned my very own Young Readers edition of the Greatest Story Ever Told. And later, when I was in college, I took a course entitled, "The Bible As Literature." I get what all the fuss is about. There are a ton of great stories, many of them filled with sex and violence, found in The Good Book.

The approach being used in Texas, however, is likely to be the none-too-subtle approach used by the state when they required that all classrooms in the Texas public school system display the Ten Commandments. Never mind running in the hall, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. 

Please understand that I am a fan of the teachings found in the bible. Like most of the New Testament with its forgiveness and conflict resolution. I also believe that there are a number of texts that can teach kids important lessons without quite so much dogma. Charlotte's Web comes to mind as a book that helped me sort out self-esteem and grief. I can assure you that I have struggled from time to time with the presentation of that story, not simply because of my own inability to get through the last chapter without weeping openly, but also because I teach a great many kids who are Muslim. Stories about pigs don't always go over the same for them as they do for their Christian classmates. Some things are best suited for a particular audience. Like maybe teachers who aren't big crybabies. 

So I guess that if the goal is to present a wide variety of ideals and thought, maybe this won't be so bad. I'm sure they'll be happy to present the humanism of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. right alongside those biblical texts. And yes, I can see an advantage to the teacher whose classroom management is supplemented by a heavy dose of judgement, but as I prepare to make this my last rodeo, I can't help but think.

That's it. I can't help but think.  

Renewal

 The philosopher George Carlin once suggested that one man's junk is another man's stuff. Specifically, your stuff is stuff while another person's stuff is junk. This makes it all the more interesting to me that every person I know has in their home what they will themselves refer to as "a junk drawer." 

There's lots of stuff in a junk drawer. 

A roll of tape. 

Batteries of various sizes and charges.

Bits of string. 

Tools living outside the relative convenience of a tool box. 

And so on. 

It is where useful things go to die. How about that spent tube of super glue? When it landed in the drawer it probably had one more application, but since super glue isn't your every day glue, it goes where all once useful things go: The Junk Drawer. 

That's just one of the things I found when I went on a mission to clean and reorganize our junk drawer. Mixed in with all those previously mentioned dead batteries and random nails and screws was that little vial of crusty chemicals that might once have been used to mend a broken plate or watch band. There were a few brand new watch batteries left on a package that once held half a dozen, with the immediacy of needing just that one every year or two left them buried under earthquake wax and cords for blinds that we got rid of decades ago. There was a padlock whose combination is now the stuff of legend. Perhaps those ancient numbers will reveal themselves to one of us in a dream about our junior high school locker. 

But not today. 

Today was the day that I ruthlessly tore into the notion that we might need this or that "someday." Today was the day that all of that wishful thinking went out the window, along with the shards of a broken protractor and a pair of dual phone jack splitters. 

Junk. 

I kept the stuff. You never know when you'll need that tiny solar powered calculator. 

Made Up Stuff

 Can you give me a brief account of the Teapot Dome Scandal? I won't trouble you for it right now, but about a year ago, I suggested that former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had evidence connecting Barack Obama to this bit of malfiesence that took place more than one hundred years ago. It was until recently the other big presidential outrage in our history books aside from Watrgate. 

Oh. Right. History books. Those were bound volumes of writing collected to inform future generations about our past. These "books" were used to keep track of the stuff that we might otherwise have forgotten. Things like wars, slavery, more wars and genocide. After years of attempting to coalesce our experience as a nation, lately there has been a movement to ignore what took place in the past and focus instead on the made up virtues of the scoundrels of who made our country exactly what it is now: "Great."

But if there was going to be an account of the past decade for our sons and daughters to read as they try and piece together how we got to this place and who we can blame for the mess that we left them, I wonder how the Reflecting Pool Saga will unfold. If you were to believe the convicted felon who was elected to a second term after being impeached not once but twice, Barack Obama is to blame for the ugly condition of the pool which was supposed to be painted American Flag Blue to commemorate our country's two hundred fiftieth birthday. Instead there were vast chunks of blue sealant floating in a sea of bright green "water" infused with green algae that had replaced the blue-green algae after dumping hydrogen peroxide into the pool to get rid of the blue-green algae. 

That and the vandals that the convicted felon insists were out cutting seams in the coating put there only weeks before at the cost of fourteen million dollars to a company run by one of his Florida campaign donators. Confusing? Sure it is. Because it's all made up. Like the war in Iran. Or the immigration crisis. Or Somalian residents of Springfield eating the cats and dogs. All of which can be traced, he's certain, back to Barack Obama. 

I would not want the job of being a presidential scholar in the next decade. On the other hand, maybe it would be quite easy: just make stuff up. 

A Change Is Gonna Come

 Out of an abundance of curiosity, I decided to Google "Megamentary." What the brain trust of Al Gore's Internet was able to tell me was that a "megamentary" is a large scale documentary, in scope, subject matter or running time. If you were interested in Francis Ford Coppola's creative process during the making of his passion project, Megalopolis, you could watch Megadoc, to get a flavor for just how big things could get if you spent one hundred twenty million dollars of your own money to make a film that no one else wanted to see. 

Which is all well and good, except I was looking for some sort of clue about the new organizational plan for the Oakland Unified School District. Earlier this summer I attended a meeting with cohorts from all the other elementary schools across The Town to get a peek at what the coming school year had in store for us. In a word? Megamentary. 

This was the solution that the powers that be came up with after budgets were once again slashed and a whole passel of folks were let go. This is not uncommon in the education biz, but for a change this purge did not come at the expense of those in the classroom. After bending to the demands of the teachers' union this past spring, OUSD found themselves in a bind. They were honor bound to give teachers a raise, but the slack had to be taken up somewhere. 

Like that thick layer of middle management that had been a question mark for several years. Fifty-three elementary schools were divvied up into three groups, each overseen by a "Network Superintendent." Instead of fifty-some schools to watch over, each of these administrators had eighteen-ish. Each one of those schools had a principal, and often a vice principal or two. And over all of this layer sat a superintendent for the whole district. 

So, the word from on high was essentially to cut out the middle, and leave it to just one person to watch over all those disparate institutions, and that word became Megamentary. 

Now it makes sense, right? 

Except as of this writing, the district's web site still maintains a page for all those intermediaries. In a month and a half, we're all going to roll back into school with the same enthusiastic need for guidance that we have in previous years. On her way out, I asked our former Network Superintendent if Megamentary was an Autobot or a Decepticon. In a refreshingly candid answer, she suggested that it was more of a Voltron kind of thing, with smaller robots joining together to make one big robot. The day after that I learned that she had taken a job at another district as Superintendent, leaving me to wonder how we will all know how to join our various pieces together when the time comes. 

Megamentary. Sure sounds cool. I wonder how it will work. 

Interruption

 What if there was no cable TV?

I know. It sounds like a bad dream, but it happened to me. For real. 

There I was, minding my own business, enjoying the morning after my sixty-fourth birthday when I made the somewhat mindless gesture of turning on the television to keep me company while I got ready to continue my day. When I was greeted by a message on the screen that read, "This channel is unavailable. V58." A chill ran down my spine as I began to wrestle with the vision of hours of my summer vacation slipping away as I dealt with tech support issues. 

I have lived through these trials before. Many were the times I have spent dangling on a telephone line as someone from a distant locale attempted to unscramble the wires that bring my dopamine release system. Attempting to head this fate off at the pass, I restarted all the machines that are responsible for bringing video entertainment in to my home. There was a message on our Tivo screen that let us know that some elements would be eliminated soon from our service, and this made me fret that our tried and true TV digester was somehow the problem. I fought off the idea of a world without a digital video recorder. As much as I comprehend a future in which all video is on demand and storing things on a magnetic disc is so incredibly 1997 that I wrestled briefly with the thought of ditching this piece of hardware for good. 

Only briefly.

Because when I found that our Internet connection was still happy and viable, I checked for outages in my area that might be affecting my level of contentment. The customer service lines were no help, nor was the app that had so helpfully reminded me earlier that day about their gratitude for my regularly scheduled payment of far too much money to not have to think about what happens when I turned on my television. 

Historical perspective: I can remember having to tune in stations that came through the air like I was operating a shortwave radio. Rabbit ears enhanced with strips of tin foil are a part of my memories. I can remember being offered the option of watching upstairs on the black and white TV that could be rolled into the kitchen or downstairs on trays placed around the color set. I remember when stations would end their broadcast day and for several hours in the middle of the night there would be no television. 

No television? 

Please. I'm old. I can't take that kind of threat. 

By the time lunch was finished and I had begun making plans for the rest of the day without anything to watch, service had been restored. Reruns and news shows and movies and channels that I continue to pay for without ever looking at were once again tumbling into my living room. And bedroom. 

And into my full heart. 

What a ridiculous story. 

Roy G Biv

 It's Pride Month. June is when LGBTQ+ contributions to the world are celebrated. 

This makes a lot of people uncomfortable. This has always been the case since it started, with marketing folks figuring it's another opportunity to sell mattresses and T shirts. Baseball teams hold Pride Nights to show their continued support of the gay community in their area by putting rainbows on things like hats and jerseys that they were going to sell anyway, but these will show everyone who is not LGBTQ+ how comfortable you are wearing something that you might have worn anyway but this one happens to have a rainbow on it. 

Of course, if these jerseys or caps were given away free to players to wear during games that were held to celebrate Pride Month, there might be a few of these players who would object to being "forced" to wear something that so obviously goes against the grain of their personal beliefs. And manhood. Such was the case in, of all places, San Francisco where a group of players chose to scribble bible verses on their caps in order to protect them from the cooties that would no doubt seep into their skulls from wearing the rainbow-infused logo. After a stern warning from Major League Baseball, the players in question went back to their business which involves wearing a lot of tight pants and patting other players on the fanny. 

That's when the Department of "Justice" stepped in. The Second Trumpreich seems committed to ignoring the pedophile in charge while inserting themselves into any and all other potential miscarriages of "Justice." In this case, it seems that the DOJ is investigating a violation of players' religious rights for scribbling the bible verse on their caps. The verse in question is Genesis 9:12-16 which reads, 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

I am not a bible scholar, but I can read. To me, this verse suggests that all god's creatures, "every kind," are bound together by the sign of the rainbow. I don't think that the rainbow is mutually exclusive for Giants fans or young men who are so insecure about their masculinity that they can't wear an alternative logo on their baseball caps for one night lest they start showering together. 

Not that showering together makes one LGBTQ+. Of course, wearing a cap with a rainbow on it probably doesn't either. 

Steps

 Sometimes I think stepparents get a bad rap. I suppose we have those Grimm Brothers and Walt Disney to thank for that. 

Then again, I have seen plenty of examples where, as they were trying to find some port in the storm, newly separated people make terrible choices when it comes to finding a new life partner. What seemed like such a good idea when you were dating turns out to be a terrible plan when it comes to plugging it into a family dynamic. 

Especially when it comes to the kids. 

The new dad shows up hoping to fit right in, but without making any adjustments to his life. He just figures that if it were good enough for the courtship, it's going to be good enough for the long haul. If the new dad in question is an authoritarian and hopes that his word will be the law in his adopted household, things can get unpleasant very fast. 

For example. 

Like the first time the kid crosses new dad and the dad decides the only way to deal with the situation is to ground the kid. And take his allowance away. Which is a pretty nasty trick because as it turns out, the money that was supposed to be for the kid's allowance didn't come from new dad, it was from the money old dad had set aside. Now new dad is using that money to take his buddies out on the town, buying jet skis the kid will never ride. 

And so on. 

Okay, now I've set the stage I can tell you that I am creating a metaphor. I believe the former game show host currently occupying the White House that he has converted into his own private Dave and Busters is the "new dad." Whatever sweet nothings he may have whispered into America's ear during campaign season have all been tossed aside for the abusive relationship in which we now find ourselves. Our allowance is being spent on gold lions and American Flag blue sealant that peels off the bottom of the reflecting pool days after we spent millions of dollars to "fix it." 

Oh, and stepdad's a pedophile. 

Bargain Hunting

 Hey guys! Great news! I just won the lottery. 

Yes, you read that right. I will be paying the state of California three hundred billion dollars.

So, doesn't that seem ridiculous? 

Not if you're a convicted felon whose mental facualties are slipping as fast as his approval numbers. If you can explain to me how opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before we started blowing things up in Iran, is a selling point for this "deal," please feel free to explain. The memorandum of understanding details exactly how much each side is giving up, and though I notice a "promise" on Iran's part not to create any nuclear weapons, there is nothing in this document that A any kind of assuranc beyond a diplomatic pinky promise. Which, according to the "very stable genius" who signed our copy of the understanding is okay because, "If I don't like it, if they don't behave, we'll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head."

And doesn't that make the rest of this months-long distraction from the Epstein Files feel like it was worth it? Three hundred billion dollars could fully fund Universal Pre-K for all American children for about 15 years, construct thousands of miles of high-speed rail, or provide over nine hundred dollars for every single person in the United States. Or it could go back into the pot of money that we said we didn't have for USAID. For fifteen years. 

And so on. 

The war itself cost, in long term effects, one trillion dollars. So, I suppose in that case this "peace plan" is a win if it only costs us three hundred billion dollars. Which also seems like a bargain if you're a deranged orange psychopath trying to stay out of jail. 

Annual

 I don't want a cage match on my front lawn. 

Nor do I desire a parade. 

I used to tell anyone who would ask what I wanted or my birthday the same thing: Plastic toys. Mind you I began giving this answer after I had reached the age of eighteen. The flaw in this plan was that once I became a father, the stream of plastic toys was necessarily split between myself and my son. 

Lately, I have been the very happy recipient of Lego sets from none other than the lad with whom I used to have to share action figures. I feel very seen. 

Starting nearly a year ago, my lovely wife set out to discover just how dear it would be to rent a cottage on the Isle of Wight. This being a somewhat limited time offer since I will only be turning sixty-four this one time. Many thanks to John and Paul for putting the idea out there.

So, what do I want for my birthday? 

The comfort of my family. The closeness of friends. A place to put my head at night. Memories of all the plastic toys that my wife will dutifully point out are still someplace slowly decomposing and will surely outlast me and those memories. 

But I suppose the most realistic answer is actually the simplest one. What I want for my birthday is another one. 

Bad Reputation

 I am not what you might call a "joiner." I tend to assiduously follow the assertion made by Groucho Marx who said, "I would never be a member of a club that would have me as a member." Groucho made this case when he turned down a membership to the storied entertainers' group, The Friars Club. This did not keep him from attending the occasional party, especially the celebrity roasts held frequently by this showbiz consortium. 

I joined my high school marching band for essentially the same reason Groucho hung around the Friars Club: for the laughs. 

When I started playing tuba, it was with the intent of being part of its somewhat legendary offshoot, the Pep Band. This required that I be part of the marching band, since membership to the Pep Band was limited to those who played a brass or percussion instrument and were a part, in good standing, of that larger ensemble. Having charted my older brother's path on a similar trajectory I understood that there was a faction of that bigger group that existed, known at that time as "the band baddies." These were individuals who took up a position just outside the emotional center, known as "the band goodies." This worked well in my mind as the acronym "BG" made it easy back in the late seventies to create a distance between myself and anyone called Bee Gees. 

Showing up in early rehearsals with the same last name as my brother who served as drum major in his senior year but never bothered to cowtow to that inner circle, preferring instead to lead from a distance that kept him from joining what he rightly felt was a bit of a cult, with the band director at its center. I traced much of that same trajectory when it was my turn to put on the uniform and walk in step, always with the intent that this was my way of being in the Pep Band. 

I have written here on occasion about the experience of being in the "cool part" of a group that was not considered cool. There was a level of acceptance that I enjoyed by being part of that bigger group that allowed me to have that team feeling that others get from playing varsity sports. I gave my all to the paramilitary program that our band director was laying out, but I kept my distance from the sycophants who spent their free periods in the director's office. 

Instead I kept my distance, hanging out in the practice rooms down the hall. I realize now that this distance seemed like a safe one, but it only kept me mildly insulated. I can see that I was not the daring rebel that I presumed myself to be. I was there to play in a band. On occasion I marched in step with those next to me in straight lines, just for the chance to dress up in costume and play music much faster and louder than we might and for just a while, we weren't inside the lines. 

As noted previously, I didn't make it to the end of my senior year as pep band president. As it turns out, the faculty and staff of my high school had a pretty effective way of shutting me down. I wasn't really in charge. I just got to spread my band id around for a while until things got uncomfortable. In my later years I wonder if I couldn't have just gone along and stuck with the program. I don't mind when a Bee Gees song gets played in my presence anymore. I'm proud of the years I spent in band, in and out of line. 

I guess I wasn't that bad after all. 

Let Them Eat Pizza

 How about a billionaire with the inability to "read the room?" 

Sounds familiar, but in this version of the story it won't be the decrepit felon who hosted a celebrity fight club in front of dozens of paid subscribers.

This one goes out to Mark "The Zuck" Zuckerberg who had this fantastic idea to bring his employees together for an all-day "hackathon" to build team spirit at The Facebook after the dismissal of nearly one tenth of his company's workforce. What is a "hackathon?" It's an intensive collaborative event where programmers, designers and subject matter experts gather to build working software or hardware prototypes. The hopes for this marathon of innovation is that the group or company can create fresh new product to offer up to an excited public. Or in this case, an anxious and frustrated nerd of a boss. 

If this whole thing reads a little like an episode of The Office where self-proclaimed World's Best Boss Michael Scott requires attendance from his crew at a company picnic, then you're not far off. At Dunder Mifflin, the staff tends to roll their eyes at the boss and go along after realizing that these misadventures are a distraction from the otherwise dull grind of a work week. This is not the general feeling at Meta, formerly The Facebook. 

One Meta employee said, “I’m literally preoccupied with keeping the lights on for my team. I have no incentive to participate, let alone have the time to do so.” As if the phrase "Meta employee" weren't discouragement enough, these minions of Zuck were being asked to come in and work feverishly on new AI product that could quite possibly eliminate their own position, then you're starting to get the picture. 

Certainly in a culture spawned in feverish nerd gatherings like a hackathon, this might be a little confusing, but when the boss issues his command to code from behind the walls of his exclusive Hawaiian estate the "fun" of pizza and beer and pulling an all-nighter loses some of its spark, especially after eight thousand of your fellow employees were just laid off to "offset other expenses." 

Other expenses such as hiring a "beach water person" to oversee liquid-based activities at the Zuck Beach House. That and paying for all that pizza. 

Off

 "There's no such thing as bad publicity." - PT Barnum

"There's a sucker born every minute." -  PT Barnum

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." - Oscar Wilde

You might be familiar with these quotes. They come to us from a time long before there was such a thing as social media, so you can imagine how difficult it was to go viral before the advent of telephones. Mister Wilde was an author and gadfly. Mister Barnum was, if you were to believe Hugh Jackman, the world's greatest showman. They lived their lives in the nineteenth century trying to make a name for themselves and, it would seem, they were successful. 

I bring them up here and now in the early part of the twenty-first century to remind us all that everything old can be new again. Or it can just be old again. Like the way the convicted felon continues to live rent-free not just in the ruins of the White House, but inside our brains. I have no doubt that among the various aphorisms and quotes this "very stable genius" has gilded on surfaces that he faces most every day are the words from Barnum and Wilde. 

Or perhaps this is giving him far too much credit. His capacity to retain information is limited to remembering which one is the giraffe. It is our own fault for letting the former game show into our homes in the first place. It is our own fault for believing that he had something to offer us. He is only here for himself. Each word that I write here is only a reminder to us of our willingness to slow down and watch the train wreck that has become our once great nation. Each day is a fresh reminder of just how many suckers have been born here in the United States over the past fifty years. 

This past Sunday I set out to ignore the gaudy spectacle being held on the front lawn of the White House. I tried not to imagine that this twice-impeached cult leader would some how manage to create a media event that would compliment his gladiatorial exhibition, like the long-awaited announcement of a peace settlement to the war that he had started himself to obscure all the other ugliness that thrives within the three ring circus that surrounds him. 

In the midst of all this ugliness, I have completely lost track of where the off switch is. 

Fractally Speaking

I have a deep and abiding respect for physics. You can see it in the title of this blog: Entropical Paradise. Not just a clever play on words, but a solid description of the world in which we live. Things continue to move from an ordered state to a less ordered state seemingly without fail. You could tell yourself that you're staying on top of chaos by sweeping up on a regular basis, but those dustpans full of debris have to go somewhere, and the bristles on your broom eventually wear down until you need to get a new one. And what do you do with the old one? 

More debris. 

There was a time when I was more of a fan of the world breaking down. I found myself rooting on the gradual breakdown of our place in the galaxy. I was amused by the idea that we might somehow slow the disintegration of our planet by conserving or taking care of the nice things we have. In the 1980s, hedonism seemed to have reached some sort of logical extreme, and the notion that the Berlin Wall came tumbling down for freedom was tempered by the need for free enterprise. It was the poet and philosopher Notorious BIG who suggested, "mo' money, mo' problems." Mo' anything means mo' problems. 

We knew about global warming. We knew about polluting the land, the sky, the water. America led the charge: Go big or go home! 

Except we were home. Which might explain all these vain efforts by billionaires to flee our third rock from the sun in hopes that we could find another rock to abuse for a few thousand years. 

Now that I am a parent with a sense of just how badly I have messed up the earth for my son to take it on the next leg of our tour of expiration, I feel bad about every plastic bag I wasted. I wish that I would have considered mortality more fully when it still seemed hypothetical. Like the fact that we are running out of helium. Humans consume it far faster than it can be made. When I think about all the balloons that I inhaled only to make my voice rise momentarily while that precious gas disappeared into space, it gives me pause. It makes all that terror of Mylar balloons seem a little ridiculous since soon there won't be anything to put inside of them.

And someday I expect that I will have a moment left to apologize to my grandchildren and their friends as they sit around their birthday table stacked high with Soylent Green wafers and decorated with worn out brooms. Sorry kids, I'm the reason you can't have nice things. 

Hidden From View

 I have it on very good authority that one cannot cause a pot of water to boil by staring at it. 

I re-learned this immtable fact, save for the stray Kryptonian wisegu.y who might beg to differ, by sitting in front of a screen for several hours last Friday night, watching a Livestream of a crew of workers assemble a scaffold. Along with several hundred thousand others, I started at my computer screen in hopes of seeing something more: The removal of the Orange Worst's name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 

Crowds began to arrive before noon on June 12 at the actual site where the defenestration of the MAGAt in chief was taking place. Onlookers were initially quiet, but as the deadline of midnight on the east coast approached, those who had committed to be there when the defacement of a national landmark was eradicated grew more unruly. The expectation that the court order that had mandated the handful of words to be physically stricken from the record approached and then passed. 

I sat at my desk as I watched the minutes tick by. A rainstorm blew through Washington DC, hampering the efforts of the workers for a spell, then they returned to their task. Surely but slowly. It became increasingly apparent that there was another force beside a court order and weather involved. There was this matter of waiting for the paperwork to be completely crossed and dotted with no room for last minute appeals. 

Shortly after midnight arrived, the crew began to drape their very impressive scaffold with an equally impressive white and blue tarp. Not American Flag Blue as some might have expected, but a screen to keep the crowd from seeing what was inevitably going to take place. 

It was at this point, approaching eleven o'clock in my neighborhood, that I took my leave of the situation. The schadenfreude I was hoping to experience would have to wait. The minor exultation I might have enjoyed would have to be of the more vicarious sort. The next morning, I reflected on the mild assurance that there are still limits to the authority of the Orange Worst. Even if those limits need to be shielded by a tarp. 

Proof

 As I sat in my seat enjoying the storytelling talents of Mister Steven Spielberg, I found myself once again struck by how many movies you can cram into one. Not unlike my experience watching Project Hail Mary back in March, I was struck by just how many hours I have spent in darkened movie theaters and in front of a television set staring at other people's notions about what lies out there in the vastness of space. 

There's a lot of it. Space, don't you know. 

It's been nearly thirty years since this same guy, Steven Spielberg, had me transfixed with a story of a visit from visitors outside our solar system. That was the first time that I considered the possibility that extraterrestrials might not be looking to vaporize us, or worse yet, to lecture us like Klaatu in The Day The Earth Stood Still. We had all just better wise up and start getting along or Gort would come back and vaporize the lot of us. Which is what those nasty aliens did on Independence Day, with little or no provocation. Maybe that was just pent up aggression left over from the first time they were able to catch reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show. You know, like when the space guys caught Hitler's first televised speech in Contact. Who'da guessed that the space guys were antifa? 

When I was much younger, I read local newspaper accounts of cattle mutilations, and the potential for them to be committed by little green men or great hulking purple monsters was never fully discounted by the reportage I could find. What would happen as soon as the otherworldly travelers got tired of their bovine experiments and decided to move on to more complex organisms? I had seen It Came From Outer Space by then and I had hope that whatever shape they came from that aliens were maybe just misunderstood, frightened and just trying to get home. 

Spielberg gave us one of those. ET just needed to phone home. And just like Roy Neary, the government wasn't going to let anyone here on Earth get in the way of us figuring out exactly what these voyagers were after. Were they here to enslave us? To make room for the galactic throughway? 

I confess that I tried to take in some of the recently released UFO files. I find it patently ridiculous to believe that "the truth is out there" when it's coming from the Trumpreich. Why not hand over the Epstein Files while you're at it? 

Someday, maybe Steven Spielberg will direct a movie about it. I'll believe it when I see it. 

Summer Reruns

 Flag day. This may or may not be Sheldon Cooper's favorite holiday. 

It just so happens to fall on the same day that some narcissistic twit celebrates his crawling out into the light. I hesitate to refer to this as a "birthday," but will entertain references to spawning or being disgorged in some way or another. I would like to rise above the need to wish this convicted felon anything but the most standard returns of the day. I have plenty of issues with what he is and the things he does and his capacity for making everything he touches turn to the sludge previously referenced from whence he crawled. A happy birthday would be a stretch, but I do hope that he is aware of just how much life goes on in spite and without him.

Flag day. Which causes me to wince remembering the image of this adjudicated rapist fondling the Stars and Stripes. Is his overt attraction to a piece of fabric a window into his soul? Every year on is birthday there were flags flying everywhere, all for the spoiled little prince. And certainly his ability to show interest or affection for other things and people is certainly suspect, so maybe this makes some sort of horrible sense. 

This summer will be full of celebration. World Cup. The Sesquicentennial of the United States. Prime Days. All of these events will no doubt be sullied by the continued existence of the man with the sludgy touch. The New York Knicks were on a thirteen game winning streak in the NBA playoffs. Then the Orange Worst decided to take a nap at Madison Square Garden during game three of the Finals and whaddya know? Knicks lose. 

How about last summer when he sat in the nearly empty grandstand watching squeaky tanks roll by while the rest of the country took to the streets to remind ourselves that we are a country without a king. 

So this year, he didn't bother to make any pretense. It's really all about him, mostly because that noise that you hear is not squeaking tanks this time but the wheels on his clown car coming off. Yes, sports fans, the winner of the one and only FIFA peace prize spent the weeks leading up to the World Cup bombing one of the competing nations. 

Change cannot happen fast enough for some of us. Because this summer will sadly still be all about him. 

I want our flag back.